When you are born in South Korea you are already one year old, you don’t use WhatsApp but another app and Valentine’s Day is celebrated not only on February 14, but also on another day. Discover these and many other curiosities about South Korea on this article!

Do you want to discover some crazy (and adorable) South Korean habits? Focus Italy asked for some advice to someone who has lived there for 12 years. Cristina, born in 1981, has been in Korea since 2006. Born in Milan, she has married a Korean man and moved to Seoul for love. In this country she has recreated a life and fdoes two jobs: she works on TV and she teaches Italian at the university.

1) Whatsapp? No thanks, KakaoTalk is better!

“When Koreans have to text they don’t use WhatsApp, but KakaoTalk” explains Cristina. “It’s some sort of WhatsApp and Facebook mixed together.” You can publish stories and videos, you can comment them and there is a section called KakaoStory similar to Instagram.
Among other things, hey don’t even use Zuckerberg’s social network (Facebook) because they can do just about everything on Kakao”

2) Boyfriends Dress Similarly

“It’s called a couple t-shirt. Or couple clothes. Couples who wear the same t-shirt or the same sweatshirt. It may not necessarily be identical, but it has similarities to make it clear that they are a couple” reveals Cristina. A cute example? In a girl’s shirt there is the right half of a heart and in the boy’s side the other half. And they complement each other…

3) Valentine Day is not only on February 14th. There is also White Day

In Korea, Valentine’s Day is the day when girls give boys chocolate. On the 14th of March on the other hand, a month later, “White Day” is celebrated and it is the day in which the boys give sweets to the girls.

Basically, a double Valentine’s Day, but linked to the genre.

4) Koreans give themselves an extra year

They don’t seem to know math, do they? Because when you are born in Korea, you are already one year old. “We also consider the time you were in your mother’s womb” explains Cristina.

5) Everyone gets old on the first day of the year

In Korea, if they ask you how old you are, it doesn’t matter if your birthday has already passed or not, you become one year older when midnight on New Year’s Eve strikes. 
“On New Year’s Eve they eat a rice soup, the rice cake soup.

They say that when you eat it, you age one year” adds Cristina. Pretty much, everyone turns one year older on the same day. Let’s try to make an example. Even if you were born in June 1999, on the first of January in 2022 you are already 23 years old. When, actually, you should be 23 six months later…

Soo, I hope you enjoyed this cool curiosities about South Korea. There is more as cute and interesting so, if you want to discover them, let me know in the comments and will do a part 2 😉